Six Times Someone Learns About William
by bugsfic
Summary: Certain important moments were missing from the William arc. My attempt to fill them in. The rating covers adult language and situations.
1. Chapter 1

One:

Time slips into that sickening slow motion that it does when something terrible is happening. Sound becomes muffled. Frohike is suspended above his body, looking down at Dana Scully drifting to the floor like a loose dove feather, caught on the tips of their fingers as he and the others ease her descent.

When he covers her with his black leather jacket, Agent Scully appears very small, her face a white smudge in the darkness. Her pale lips move and her vein-etched eyelids flutter, but she isn't truly present in the room. He loosens her clothing and elevates her feet and now has nothing to do but fight his terror as the EMT's finally arrive-seven minutes felt like hours. Time is still moving with the grind of rusty gears. He has to break its glacial bond to the events.

"Anything?" he barks at Byers, motioning toward the man's cellphone.

"It's going straight to Mulder's voicemail," Byers reports with a shake of his head.

One EMT has a clipboard. With his pen hovering over the form, he asks, "And chance Ms. Scully is pregnant?"

John Byers speaks first. "There's no-"

Time stops, then flares like a star imploding, briefly blinding Frohike. He cuts in. "It's a possibility, yes."

Byers and Langley stare at him with their mouths hanging open.

The parametric takes that note and tucks the clipboard between Scully and the bodyboard. Two more EMT's wheel in a gurney and the three friends step back.

Frohike returns to the matter at hand. "We've got to get Mulder on the phone," he commands. "He has to be warned...And told about this."

Langley dials too. "Straight to voicemail," he echoes.

"I'll try Assistant Director Skinner," says Byers, scrolling through his phone's numbers.

Frohike doesn't take his eyes off Scully. Still unconscious, she is carefully lifted and placed on the gurney, then the straps put in place over her. As she's wheeled past, he takes her hand briefly. "We'll be at the hospital," he promises her, even if he wasn't certain that she understands. But he always goes to her sickbed; he'll be there again.

The other two men are still fighting with their phones in frustration. "Nothing," they announce in unison.

Checking the clock, Frohike shakes his head. "It's after midnight in Oregon. We'll have to contact the closest field office and see if we can get some agents out there to check on them. I don't want to be the one to tell Agent Scully that we've lost touch with Mulder."

Trailing behind him, John and Langley mirror his head shake.

But half an hour later, ensconced in a line of waiting room chairs, there is still no contact with either Skinner or Mulder. Frohike now wishes fervently for time to not just slow, but stop dead until that phone rings back.

Byers crosses his legs and straightens the crease on his slacks. He clears his throat. "Frohike, why did you say that Agent Scully may be pregnant?"

The older man leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He peered at John over his shoulder. "You didn't actually believe Agent Scully's story that she was dropping off donuts when we met her coming out of Mulder's apartment that morning, did you?"

John smooths his tie. "I haven't really considered it one way or another," he says with great dignity.

"I did," confesses Langley, his adam's apple waggling.

"Me too," Frohike says, brooding.

"But that is not to the case," protests Byers. "One does not follow the other because we know all too well that Scully isn't able to-"

"Mulder told us to watch out for her," Frohike says. "I was covering all contingencies."

Byers nods unhappily and finally falls silent.

Under the hot stare of the subject herself, Mulder had pulled the three of them aside before he left the Hoover Building. Only to have her take Skinner in a corner, her low voice somehow the strongest one in the room, giving her supervisor his own implicit directions.

Byers' phone rings, stopping any further protests. He quickly connects his call. "Yes, Mr. Skinner?"

Langley and Frohike slump slightly at the name that's not Mulder.

After listening to a terse few words from Skinner, Byers blanches white under his beard. Frohike buries his face in his gloved hands.

"I see...Yes," mutters Byers. Then, after a long pause, adds, "I'm afraid there's bad news on our end as well." He goes on to explain, then nods at whatever Skinner is saying, even though the other man can't see him.

When he hangs up, he says, "Well, that's it. He's coming back as soon as possible. There's nothing more to be done in Oregon."

Frohike nods, his head still in his hands.

The minutes tick by in their precise, painful sixty second intervals before a doctor finally comes for them. He surveys the motley group. "Only one," he announces.

Squaring his shoulders, Frohike stands. "I'll do it," he says, more to them than the doctor.

Having listened to the usual warnings not to stress the patient, Frohike enters the dim room and sinks to the chair beside Scully. Her eyes are closed. He gently lifts her slack hand and cradles it in his gloves. Her fingers warm and flex slightly.

"Mul'er?" she murmurs, her eyelids fluttering.

"He's not here yet, Agent Scully," Frohike hedges.

She lolls her head over to focus on him. "Okay," she says child-like, her gaze wide-eyed.

He takes a deep breath to hold back his emotions at this sight. "Good to have you back with us. No more laying down on the job," he says too gruffly, trying to cover.

Her squeeze on his fingers shows that she forgives him.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"For what?"

"They tell me that you warned the EMT's that I may be pregnant; averted possibly endangering my fetus."

There's that breath again, so like a sob, rising in his barrel chest. "No problem," he manages to say.

Her brow furrows. "How did you know...If I couldn't know."

That finally breaks the tension for him. He adores Dana Scully when she worries that she's missing a joke, even if it's a cosmic one.

"I make my living by imagining the unexpected, unexplained and unbelieved, Agent Scully. It was just another such moment."

"My pregnancy and flukemen...On the same front page," she says and he quickly makes clear, "Never."

The grip tightens on his hand. Her smile is tremulous. "I need to talk to Mulder," she says and it sounds like a question instead of a statement.

Her hand is light; the white feather floats in his grasp again. He lifts it to his mouth, and presses his lips to the translucent skin on the back. He cannot meet her gaze or say the words, but in the hitch to her breathing, he knows that she understands.

But she still says it again: "I need to talk to Mulder," and there is no question this time.

end ~ part 1

E/N: Yes, I took the comic relief characters and made them be angsty!


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2:

Dana's tear-edged message makes Maggie snatch up her receiver to return the call, but she just gets her daughter's machine. A few frantic moments of digging finally finds the number to Dana's cellular phone, but there is only voicemail there was as well. Maggie leaves word that she's home and will be waiting to hear from Dana on both machines.

Next she tries Fox Mulder's numbers, but can only leave messages there too. He always contacts her when Dana is in trouble, but he could be equally endangered. Maggie settles in for the long wait for the return call. Since Dana became a field agent, these actions have become a sickening routine for her mother.

The phone finally rings. "Mom, it's me," says Dana.

"What's happened?"

"I can't talk-" Her daughter sounds distant, both from the cell phone's echo and emotionally. "I'm in Arizona right now, on a case. I'll come by as soon as I'm back."

"Honey, can't you just say-"

"I can't go into it on the phone." There are those tears in her voice again. Dana disconnects the call before her mother can protest any further.

Maggie considers calling Fox again, but she and her daughter's partner are always careful as to how often they team up against Dana's reticent moments. She can only go to that well so often.

Two days later, she receives another short call, telling Maggie that Dana is on her way over. Rain clouds are gathering, and she's irrationally afraid of Dana driving in this weather. She stays by the front window, watching for the car to appear.

When Maggie opens the door and sees her daughter's battered face and bleak eyes, she can't hold back her gasp.

"Mom, it's okay," Dana says, and brushes by to enter the house. "Come on inside and let's talk," she adds, as though inviting Maggie into her own home.

Perhaps Dana believes she must show her mother yet again the sort of place that she inhabits-not a house filled with chintz upholstered furniture or cabinets of Limoges porcelain. but of shadows and blank-faced evil. Locking the door behind them, Maggie follows to the living room.

She needs to remind her daughter who's the hostess here. "Would you like some tea?" she asks.

Pacing the Oriental rug, Dana shakes her head, then nods. Moving to the kitchen, she begins to automatically go through the motions for tea; filling the kettle, putting it on the stove, pulling down the tin and cups from the cabinets.

The storm clouds sink low and black over the house. Maggie turns on the lights against the dimness. "Honey, sit down," she orders, gently pushing her daughter to the kitchen table and taking over the tea-making duties.

The younger woman sinks into a chair. Maggie flinches as she gets a better look at the large abrasion and bruise on Dana's jaw. A cut is sutured closed on her forehead.

"How did you get hurt?" she asks, tense.

Dana combs her hair behind her ears. "It doesn't matter. I'm fine."

"Something was already wrong before this trip to Arizona," Maggie remembers, her fear mounting.

Dana licks her lips in slow motion, a nervous gesture that her mother knows denotes anxiety.

Maggie sits beside her and takes her hand. "Tell me."

Tears glistens in Dana's eyes but her voice is strong. "Mulder's been abducted. He's gone."

"You thought he was in Arizona?"

"Yes."

"But you didn't find him."

It's not a question. Dana shakes her head.

"Who has him?"

Dana looks away. "You can't know details-"

Maggie gently squeezes her daughter's slack fingers. "He's gone. That's what matters."

"I have to find him-"

As the kettle screams, Maggie reaches back to turn off the burner. "Of course," she says. The tea can wait.

Another lick of Dana's lips. "Because..."

Even as the clouds close in, darkening the windows, the room goes white and Maggie's body becomes weightless. Her only anchor is her daughter's suddenly strong fingers, holding on tight.

"...I'm going to have a baby."

"Thank you, our blessed Virgin, for hearing our prayers," Maggie says in a rush, the words on her tongue before her daughter can even finish.

"Oh, Mom," Dana says with a combination of affection and exasperation.

"Oh Mom, yourself," Maggie sobs, pulling her daughter into a hug. "You don't think you were the only one praying for this, do you?"

"Of course not," Dana grumbles in her mother's shoulder.

"The IVF worked? I thought your last treatment was over a year ago." Maggie disentangles herself and rises to quickly make two mugs of tea. When Dana doesn't reply, she looks over her shoulder. The younger woman is staring down at her twining hands. "Dana?"

Her daughter clears her throat. "The IVF _didn't_ work."

"Oh, I see." Maggie puts the cups on the table and slides the sugar bowl closer. "So you really need to speak to Fox," she says archly.

"Yes. We need to investigate-"

"You don't need your combined doctorates to figure out how it happened," Maggie notes with an unlady-like snort, her joy bubbling up through her nose.

"Mom!"

Maggie raises her eyebrows. "Dana, you don't think I believed Fox's story that he was dropping off donuts when I came by to pick you up for early mass that morning, do you? A mother _knows_," she says smugly.

Dana hunches her shoulders. With determination, she tries to change the subject. "It was so nice to come back to the rain. It was over 110 degrees every day in Arizona-"

Ignoring her, Maggie probes a bit more. "We're both adults here-"

"Mom, I really don't want to have this conversation," Dana insists. "There's more important things to talk about-"

Her mother is relentless. "But I am talking about that! All I mean is, it wasn't an immaculate conception."

"It might as well be. I've seen the medical test results-"

"There are a power greater than any doctor's," Maggie notes firmly.

"I prayed, but for the IVF to work," Dana says, her voice low and pained. "I believed that the failure was my answer from God."

"I did more than pray." In her happiness, Maggie has dropped her guard.

Dana furrows her brow. "What do you mean?"

Maggie twitches a smile. "Nothing."

"Mom..." Dana is the inquisitor now, her gaze sharp.

Maggie finds the rain splattering on the kitchen window utterly fascinating. "You'll think it's silly..."

"I'm more worried it's something dangerous."

"I would never harm you or the baby!" Maggie protests.

"What did you do?" Dana asks with deadly calm.

"I...Do you remember me telling you that Donna Bolton went to France last fall?"

Dana clearly doesn't, but Maggie forges on. "She went to Lourdes..."

Dana jumps up from the table. "Mom!"

Maggie holds up her hand. "I asked her to bring back a bottle of the healing waters from the holy grotto-"

Collapsing back in her chair, Dana fights between a smile and tears. "Oh, Mom."

"What could it hurt?" Maggie points out.

"You slipped me some magic potion?"

"Actually, both you and Fox," admits Maggie. "Remember when the two of you came over for New Year's cookies? In the tea water." Maggie nods to her mother-in-law's Wedgwood teapot on the countertop.

Her daughter's mouth falls open. "Mulder?"

"You never know where the problem really is in these cases-"

"Yes, we do know, Mother," Dana lectures. "We had all the test results. My few preserved ova were barely viable, while he had excellent sperm mobility-" She stops. "I did not want to talk about this," she says to herself.

"It couldn't hurt," repeats her mother.

"I just can't believe you did something this desperate, Mom." Dana takes her mother's hand again.

"And spending months, thousands of dollars, and how many tears on the fertility treatments wasn't some leap of faith?" says Maggie, stung by her daughter's pity.

Dana drops her head. "Faith...If only I could believe this is how my pregnancy came about-"

"What else could it be?" Maggie asks practically.

"Mom..." Dana whispers, raising terrified, tear-filled eyes for Maggie to see.

She gathers her daughter in her arms, holding her close and fierce. She understands. "That's why you need to find Fox. You need his power to believe."

Dana nods frantically, leaving a train of mucus on her mother's neck. Maggie is suddenly reminded of such moments from thirty years ago. But this isn't a pain that a Bandaid and a kiss will fix.

Instead, she reaches for the box of Kleenex on the counter and both women blow their noses.

"I don't know what to believe, Mom," Dana says haltingly. "I've been shown medical tests...Results saying that Mulder was terminally ill-"

Maggie gasps, covering her mouth.

"The FBI is saying that he was desperate, had nothing to live for, and that's why he's gone-"

"He wouldn't have kept that from you," Maggie says definitely.

Dana gives another half-sob and leans against her mother's comforting shoulder. "They don't know him like I know him. He had everything to live for," she rasps. "Even if he didn't know about the baby yet, he wanted us-" Her words are choked off.

Maggie smooths her daughter's hair back from her hot forehead and makes low cooing sounds.

"We were so close to finally having some peace," Dana finishes.

"You do have peace, my love," her mother reassures her. "It is there, growing within you."

Dana gasps out a laugh. "I doubt that. I already have morning, afternoon and evening sickness."

"So until Fox gets back, you'll stay here during your leave of absence-" Maggie can be just as bossy as her daughter.

"What? No, I'll still be working on the X-files-" insists Dana, struggling loose from her mother's hold and going to the stove to refresh her tea.

"Why in the world?" asks Maggie.

Dana leans against the counter, cradling her mug. "First, I need the money-"

Maggie waves her off. "You can ask for a reassignment to a desk job-"

Her daughter licks her lips again, caught with her excuses. She puts the mug down with a clank on the tile countertop.

"And second...This is _our_ section, Mom. And they've assigned some lackey to it, for the sole purpose of running it into the ground, just like when they gave the X-files to Fowley and Spender."

Mulder didn't stop working when I was abducted, and I won't either. If he was dying this past year, he still kept working. How can I-"

"You're pregnant, Dana," Maggie points out. "That's not the same. You have another life to protect."

"I am protecting my baby, Mom, when I try to find the truth-"

"Or try to find Fox," adds Maggie.

Dana stares out the window over the sink. The drip in the drainpipe sounds like a tolling bell. "I've got to find him," she says in tune with the thudding drops.

Maggie is afraid of the stark emotion that she hears in her daughter's voice. Dana has held herself apart from love for so many years, this flood may drown her, just as she needs to keep her head above water.

"You will," she says with nothing but her faith to back it up. "And you will have a beautiful baby."

"From your lips to God's ears," Dana says with no irony.

"Shall we pray?" her mother suggests, bowing her head before Dana can answer.

"Yes, please."

She comes back to the table to sit beside her mother and drops her own head with relief before lacing her hands together. They speak old, familiar words weighed with new meaning and urgency until their voices are raw.

"Amen," Maggie finally says softly . The two women cross themselves. Then she clasps hands with Dana. "Do you feel better, sweetie?"

"I do," her daughter says, speaking as if coming from a trance.

"That's what mothers are for." Maggie lays a warm palm on Dana's abdomen. "You'll see."

At her daughter's bright smile, she knows that she's said the right thing.

"I am going to be a mother, aren't I?" Dana says, as though the idea has suddenly come to her.

The answer is in the rhythm of the water in the drain, now a rush of excitement, all the heavens open.

~ end part 2


	3. Chapter 3

_Adult language warning for this part_

Part 3:

"John, I was so happy to hear from you." Monica Reyes took a tentative step toward Doggett, as though to move into a hug which didn't come. His outstretched hand kept their bodies apart and after a pause, she shook it.

"Thanks for comin', Agent Reyes," Doggett said. "I know it was short notice-"

She pasted on a smile and looked up for the Helena airport baggage claim sign. "It sounded important."

"I thought you may have some insight into a case I'm on," he told her as he fished his cell phone out of his pocket. "Let me check on the status while you get your bag. I'll see you out front."

The phone to his ear, he strode away, leaving her to head for the luggage carousel. After collecting her suitcase, she waited outside on the sidewalk. A rental car pulled up beside her.

Doggett leaned across the front seat to open the door for her. Raising her eyebrows at his gallantry, she tossed her bag in the backseat, then settled into the car beside him.

"So what's the case?" she asked, fumbling for her pack of cigarettes.

Pulling away from the curb, he tapped the No Smoking sticker on the dashboard. "The FBI'll pissed if I lose the cleaning deposit."

Sighing, she shoved the box back in her pocket.

"The case," she prompted him.

"I've been assigned a missing person investigation. A FBI agent named Fox Mulder. You know of him?"

"Hell, yes," she said with excitement, twisting in her seat. "Who hasn't heard of the infamous Fox Mulder?"

_Harry Schmidt, the lead agent on John's first case, had tipped his head. "See that guy?"_

_John had squinted across the crowded conference room. A tall, dark-haired man stood apart from the other agents gathered for a briefing. "Yeah."_

_"Stay away from him."_

_"Who is it?"_

_"Fox Mulder."_

_"The profiling golden boy? I read a number of his monograms while at the Academy-"_

_"Not a golden boy anymore. He's tossed his career away to chase aliens."_

_"Illegals?"_

_"No, little green men."_

_"What the hell?"_

_Harry shook his head. "Just never get on a case that he's connect to. Two different options happen, both bad for you. He'll solve it with some cock and bull theory and make you look like an idiot. Or it won't be solved and it'll get stuck in his X file cabinet, pushing down your solve rate." Clasping John's shoulder, Harry drove home his point. "You're going somewhere in this agency and it's up. He's in the basement already and his career's sinking fast. Don't ever get tied to him, even for just one case."_

_Just then, a short, red-haired woman had joined Fox Mulder, approaching from behind. She didn't speak or look at him, but he glanced down at her. He murmured something out of the corner of his mouth and John could see her fight a smile. Mulder was still looking at her, but when she gazed up at him, he turned away. It was a strange sort of interplay; an intense awareness of each other, but with a reluctant aloofness. _

_"What about her?" John nodded toward the couple._

_Harry glanced over. "Oh her. His partner. Another person who could have had a career, but she chooses to stay in that basement. She's a warning to anyone who does get tangled up with him."_

Doggett pulled into a parking lot. "Yeah, that Fox Mulder."

"We're meeting the other agents here?" Monica got out of the car.

"No, they're still following up on a lead. I thought we'd grab some coffee..."

He studied the cafe's whimsical sign with dissatisfaction. _Perk Mi Up_ it read.

"Can't just get a damn cuppa joe and a donut anymore," he lamented. "Even in Montana."

Monica smiled behind his back. "Have a breve and a cranberry scone. It won't kill you."

After picking up their order, they chose a table away from the few patrons. The strong espresso nearly wiped out her craving for a cigarette. Once again, she probed at the reticent man beside her as he stared broodingly down into his Americano.

"Missing person's case. Fellow agent. Details."

Efficiently, John explained that Fox Mulder, after an alternately brilliant and checkered FBI career, had disappeared several months ago on one dark night while searching for an alien spaceship.

Monica shook her head. "A what?"

"You heard me." John bit off the end of his croissant and swallowed with no pleasure.

"And I'm going to assume that you didn't follow that lead."

"Nope."

"What is your theory?"

"The evidence I've gathered early on says that driven by the utter failure of his years of work, and faced with a terminal illness, he staged the greatest disappearing act the agency has ever seen."

She peered at him over her cup's rim. "Pretty fanciful for you, John. But-"

"But what?" he grumbled.

"You're the one who's left the but hanging in the air."

"My butt's right on this chair," he told her.

"But-" she prompted again, not to be dissuaded.

"His partner is stonewallin' me at every turn. Keeping me in the dark, haring off to follow up on leads..." He wound down with a shape of his head.

"So he believes that Agent Mulder was abducted by aliens?"

"She." Doggett looked around as if expecting a waitress would materialize to top off his coffee.

Monica leaned back in her chair. There was a lot of weight put in one short word.

"She's bought into Fox Mulder's bete noire?"

John's brow furrowed. "Huh?"

"Does she believe in aliens?"

"She says that she's seen things she can't explain...And there's another problem."

Monica broke off the corner of her scone. She was suddenly ravenous.

"Agent Scully-that's the partner-she was rendered sterile four years ago...She says at the hands of these various nefarious forces that are in cahoots with the aliens-" John dismissed everything he said with a wave of his hand.

"She told you this?"

"It's in this section's files. These X-flies they worked on."

"Okay..." Monica said slowly.

"But now she's pregnant."

"I see." Yes, things were becoming more clear with each moment. "How far along?"

"Far enough," John said, the tip of his head answering her next question before she could pose it.

_"Would Scully cover up for Mulder?" John had asked Dan McKeowen who'd served on several task forces with the X-files agents._

_"Well, he's got a big dick," McKeowen replied with a smirk. _

_Jackson, his partner, topped off his coffee mug from the break room carafe. "No, no, I heard she's got a really tight twat." _

_Both men roared with laughter and John forced a smile on. Keep 'em talking...Dana Katherine Scully, doctor of medicine and battle-seasoned special agent for the FBI, could be reduced to just another horny broad by a couple of tossed-off phrases. The way it worked never failed to amaze John. Sometimes his job disgusted him. _

Monica shoved her balled up napkin into her now empty drink cup. "The victim. You searched his home. What did you find?"

"Typical middle-aged guy bachelor pad," John said with a shrug.

"You'd know," she muttered.

He continued on as though he didn't hear her. "Signs of recent female companionship."

"What told you that?"

"Outdated porn stashed in the back of the closet; scented candle in the bathroom."

She gave a definite nod. "So just one woman. Wouldn't bother for casual pickups."

John shoots her that quick sideways smile of his that always made her want to drink an ice cold beer really fast. He continued: "No condoms suggested the woman in question was Agent Scully."

"And look where that got them." This time, he didn't return her grin, so she returned to her business-like tone. "How outdated?"

"What?"

"The porn, John. You checked, I assume."

"For investigative purposes only," he protested.

She grinned again, but hid it behind her hand.

"Two years out of date," he admitted.

"How long have they been partners?"

"Seven years."

She raised her eyebrows. "Interesting."

"How so?"

"I mean, you either do or you don't, pretty quick, wouldn't you say?"

He shifted in his chair. "Maybe she played hard to get."

"Maybe he did," she put forth.

John snorted incredulously. "Do men do that?"

She turned in her chair so that John couldn't see her expression. "He could have been shy," she suggested.

"He was a man, Monica."

She squinted at John. "And Agent Scully is a woman, I take it."

"Of course she is," he said, wrinkling his brow in confusion.

"I don't mean the type of woman that a man would finally notice has a pair of tits after five years. I mean a _woman,_" she said with emphasis.

He stared into his own empty coffee cup.

"Oh, yes she is," Monica murmured.

"I just figured...Work relationships can get messy. They must have known that."

"Yes, they can get fucked," Monica said harshly, causing him to finally look at her.

John added: "And when I went back to his apartment for a follow up, I found her sleeping on his bed. She said she was there to feed the fish..."

"You prefer your evidence concrete like that," she observed wryly.

"Yeah, but this damn case is anything but a smooth ride," he bemoaned.

Monica cleared her throat, hoping it would clear her thoughts as well. "So where do I fit in, John? You asked me out here for a reason."

He looked relieved to be back on solid ground. "I need your skills. I need you to talk Dana out of this craziness and to accept that Mulder may be dead. Or worse."

We've found two others who were taken that night with Mulder, I assume by the same people. Both were brutally tortured. One's dead and one was abducted right out of the hospital where she was being treated. I want to stop Dana from clinging to this idea that Mulder's just gonna show fine and dandy. When we find the truth, it's gonna kill her." His rough voice finally caught. "And we have to think of her baby.'

"How can I help?" Monica said quietly.

"I'll show you the reports of injuries on the other two abductees. I think it's some sort of ritual practices-"

"What about your theory that Fox Mulder faked his own disappearance?" she interjected.

"I want an answer, Monica. One that will cause as little pain as possible for Dana and close the door on this." He rose from the table. Apparently the background briefing was over.

"The other abductees were found here in Helena?"

"Yep, out in a remote field."

"I want to go there. I may feel something."

Doggett rolled his eyes at at the word 'feel'. "If you think it'll help," he said grumpily.

For some reason, Monica was suddenly very angry. "You were going to tell me about Fox Mulder. But you've spent an hour telling me about Dana Scully. I'll need to find out what I can about Mulder on my own," she said, then stormed out to the car, leaving John to clean off the table before joining her.

X

The undulating hills carry away Monica's discontent, clearing her mind. She needs to center her thoughts on the case, the facts as they've been given to her, and on finding Fox Mulder. She puffs on her cigarette, finding another kind of peace.

This prairie is the sort of place that every breeze turns into a babbling discourse in the rattling strands of grass. If only she could hear what it's trying to tell her...

She's focusing on the twisted branches of a hangman's tree when the others approach. She quickly grubs out her cigarette and turns.

She'd expected Dana Scully to resemble John's willowy blonde ex-wife for some reason. Instead, she has to look down, down, down from her own awkward, gawky height to see this delicate doll face, incongruously on the soberly-robed figure of a slender Medieval saint. Rounded features capped with sun-flamed hair and then Monica gets to the eyes...a welding torch blue; the most intense gaze that she's ever seen, set over a contempt-curled set of soft lips.

Monica's smile of embarrassed greeting turns to a grin. Yes, Dana Scully is a _woman_. And Fox Mulder is still alive; no man was leaving that force behind; he wouldn't dare.

~ end part 3

E/N: Yes, I did like Doggett and Reyes. Shoot me.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Sorry for the long wait. I got 3,500 words written, realized it totally wasn't the direction I wanted to go, started all over, and ended up with 8,100 words!

Part 4:

The room is dark but for the frantic dancing of guttering candlelight on the wood walls. Mulder calls out, "Scully?"

Her, "Mulder," is barely a whisper.

As he stumbles forward, the smell of blood and the sound of rasping breathing meets him.

"She's exhausted," Monica Reyes murmurs at his shoulder.

"I brought medics," he tells her. "Get them."

The medical personnel are already there, caught in the narrow doorway with their equipment and backboard. Suddenly hysterical, Mulder is the picture of the frantic father, a Ricky Ricardo-like figure running manically in circles and banging into walls, as he can't seem to figure out what to do next.

Until Scully calls to him: "Mulder, take the baby."

In the darkness, he can only see the half-moon of her cheek and a single pale, determined eye focused on him. She has a tight bundle of rags tucked under her arm.

"Take him."

Him. It's a him. That's a start; first question answered.

Suddenly he's joined at the bedside by the medics and their clanking boxes. They point flashlights at Scully, exposing her sweaty face. He has the irrational urge to knock the lights away.

When the female medic reaches for the baby, Scully is strong and definite. "No. Only he can have the baby."

Breaking from his stupor, Mulder lifts the swaddled form from Scully's side and presses it under his teeshirt against his own body. Warm. Babies should be kept warm. There's some squirming, but no protest.

"How is she?" he says over the top of the medic's rapid questions to Scully and Reyes.

"Has she passed the placenta?" is asked.

Monica looks horrified. "Was she supposed to?"

The patient speaks for herself. "No, the contractions have stopped and he hasn't nursed."

Relieved that she's found another medical professional, the medic talks to Scully. "We've got to transport you. Give you some Pitocin if we don't see any action within the next half hour."

Something is wrong and Mulder can't do anything but sway in place, rocking the baby. A damp set of lips mouths at his stomach.

"Uh...I think he's hungry now."

The medic gives Mulder a few seconds of her attention. Her businesslike hands give a very quick examination, exposing the baby to her flashlight beam. Mulder can see that he's still covered with dried amniotic fluid, although his nose, mouth and eyes have been cleared. A couple inches of umbilical cord with a frayed string tied around the end hangs from his belly. His eyes are closed even as his lips purse.

The nurse dismisses Mulder's concern. "He's sleeping. It's just a reflex."

"We need to get out of here," says Monica. "In case those people change their minds."

The other medic has put in an IV to Scully and she is moved onto the board. Once she's loaded onto the helicopter, Mulder clamors in as well. Monica waved off the co-pilot's offer of his seat, checking her weapon before striding away from the helicopter as it lifts off.

Mulder assures that he's strapped in tightly. Scully calls out to him. "You have the baby?"

He doesn't take it personally. He knows that this fear is all she has right now.

"Yes, Scully, he's right here with me. Nothing will happen to him."

The twenty minute flight to the closest trauma center seems like twenty hours. Once he staggers out of the helicopter awkwardly, refusing the medic's offers to take the baby, they whisk Scully onto a gurney and all hurry toward the elevator that carries them down to the warmth and light of the hospital.

While Scully is taken into a labor room to complete her birth, he is routed toward the neonatal ward. Before she can admonish him again, Mulder tells her, "I won't leave him."

He does allow the nurse to take the baby from him but he keeps his gaze on the squirming infant until his tired eyes burn.

"Sir, you're going to have to wait outside-"

"I'm not going anywhere," he says. Clarity and direction finally return and he's able to smoothly act. He pulls out his old FBI identity card that Scully had given him as a 'back from the dead' gift; she'd been keeping it around her apartment. He had numerous photos of her, but that was all she had to prop at her bedside during his absence. Of course, his pictures were spare crime scene photographs where she looked really pretty.

"Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI," he says, affecting the flat tone from days gone by. "This baby is evidence in a case we're investigating. I'm not to allow him out of my sight."

The nurse, an older woman with a harsh mouth but kind eyes, raises an eyebrow but then turns back to her duties. "Just keep out of our way, Agent," she scolds.

He watches the two nurses and attending physician as the boy is briskly toweled until his skin is bright pink. The umbilical cord is clamped and the end removed. This gets a lusty cry, the first sound Mulder's heard from the child. His eyelids squeeze shut to put power behind the screams, but then they snap open and Mulder is pinned in a blue-eyed gaze, so like another that has the power to paralyze him.

"Is he all right?" Mulder asks nervously. He knows the rooms are too far apart, but what if Scully hears? Will she think that he's failing?

"Yes, sir," the doctor says. The tiny Asian woman listens to the baby's heart and lungs and shakes off the nurse's suggestion to put him on oxygen.

The nurse locks a plastic band around the boy's ankle. "This has a sensor for detecting if the baby is removed from the facility," she says to Mulder, as though he'd suggested their security was lax.

"That's good," he responds, "but we're concerned about a number of threats against this child and his mother. Not just kidnapping."

This makes the woman look properly chastised and Mulder's grimly pleased. The other nurse has made imprints of the baby's feet before taking a blood sample from his heel. Mulder watches the one drop of deep red blood bubble out and be captured on the paper.

Billy Miles had bled red too.

Another nurse pokes her head in. "The mother is ready to see her baby." In her harried tone, Mulder can hear Scully expressing how ready she is.

"Is Scully all right; is Agent Scully all right?" Mulder babbles.

"She's passed the placenta and has been stabilized," this nurse says after seeing a nod from the doctor.

Mulder trails after the nurse pushing a bassinet with the baby, slumbering again after his outburst. This kid does seem to sleep a lot; Scully's child indeed. He follows down the hall, keeping close as a heeler dog.

The hospital room is dim and blissfully quiet. Scully's been watching the door though, her eyes huge and dark.

"Here we are!" says the nurse cheerfully.

"Everything's fine," Mulder assures her before she can ask yet again.

Without having to be told, he lifts the baby and brings him to Scully. She tugs loose the blanket that he's wrapped in and does her own inspection, gentle yet efficient, giving particular attention to the clamped cord.

The nurse starts to look nervous-this is no ordinary mother.

Scully gives her a tense smile and folds the blanket back over the baby's fat belly. Mulder takes this as permission to relax and collapses into a chair beside the bed. She reaches out and grasps his arm.

"How are you?" she asks and he can only laugh.

"Let me take the baby-". The nurse steps back when Scully's blazing eyes shoots up.

"We're fine," Mulder assures the older woman.

When the door snicks shut behind the nurse, Mulder and Scully look at each other.

"Well..." he says and crosses his legs, jiggling his top foot.

"Damn, help me with this gown," she says.

He's not sure what she wants at first, and finds himself trying to pull it up as Scully's trying to pull the gown down. When he sees her white breast, the parts click together.

He quickly sits back down.

"I'm sure some lactation consultant will be here any minute," she grumbles. "I want to take care of this on my own."

Of course Scully doesn't want the help of yet another cheerful, intrusive stranger. But Mulder can think of no way to help at all, so he remains fixed to the hard plastic chair, twining his fingers and watching her induce her son to feed. Pain etches on Scully's face and she involuntarily groans. He wants to tell her to stop if it hurts so much; that she's been through too much already; but he finally knows to keep his mouth the hell shut.

He's given her nothing but grief since his return, from the moment that he'd opened his eyes.

"Do you have any idea what you've been through?" Scully had asked him.

"Only what I see in your face." He watched the tears slide off her eyelashes and her lips waver. She draped herself on his shoulder and just her gentle weight is nearly enough to send him back to unconsciousness. It's real. He was home... "Anybody miss me?" he said.

Her fingers laced with his. He could feel the swirls of her fingerprints as she stroked along his palm.

"What do you remember?" she said, her voice low.

The sharp slap of memories, harsh and painful. He wouldn't say it. "I thought I signed up for the aromatherapy."

"You already used that joke," she scolded gently. Her lips pressed on the back of his hand. "Do you remember that?"

He thought. "Yes," he finally said. "I'll try to get some new material."

Her chuckle was watery. "That's okay. I'll always laugh at your jokes. I'm just worried that you don't remember-"

He lifted his hand; heavy as rock. The few inches to her face was miles in effort. He touched her cheek. "I remember."

It was just the right thing to say. She kissed the tip of his thumb before taking his hand and drawing it to her body.

His fingertips grazed the curve of her breast...Yes, he remembered...Then there was another roundness, and it was hard and firm. He managed to loll his head and forced his eyes open as wide as they would go, in a ridiculous attempt to somehow see more.

Scully settled back in her chair, biting her lip and waiting.

"Wha-" he gurgled. He was strapped to the chair; there's pressure everywhere, crushing him to the point as close to death as he could be while still breathing. Then there was the tiniest of pinpricks entering his body-at his groin, in his mouth, under his sternum.

Blackness washed over him, and Scully's voice was very far away. Now her hands were light, brushing like a breeze across his suddenly heated skin.

When he returned to consciousness, Skinner was sitting there, hands on his knees, staring at the wall. A nurse hovered. She started feeding him ice chips every time he opened his mouth. He finally got a hand up to stop her.

"Now you're going to say that you have a bun in the oven too," Mulder sputtered.

Skinner turned his sharp gaze. "Don't be an asshole."

The nurse scurried away.

"Where's Scully?" Mulder gasped.

"She needed to rest. She hasn't slept since you were...Revived."

Mulder tried to sit up, but fell back on the pillow. Skinner didn't move to help him. "What happened to Scully?" he finally asked.

"She should tell you herself."

Mulder sighed deeply and the action hurt. Everything hurt.

Skinner succinctly explained the events as they pertain to Mulder for the past six months. He wanted to leave, to escape what he was being told, but he couldn't rise from the mattress. The pressure was back; the blade to the heart.

The door cracked open. "Is he awake?" Scully whispered.

"Yes, Scully, I am," Mulder mumbled.

Skinner stood. "I'll get a cup of coffee," he announced.

Taking the chair he vacated, Scully flashed Mulder a nervous smile.

"Feeling better?" she asked.

"Sure." Might as well get this over with. He flapped a hand at her. "So you've been keeping busy while I was away."

She worked her jaw in that way that always gave him the impression that she was chewing on profanity instead of spitting it out. "Yes, I've been occupied."

"More fertility treatments?" he suggested.

"I didn't get any more treatments. You may recall how lightheaded and ill I was feeling in Bellefleur. It wasn't the alien presence."

He heard women's screams echoing out of the darkness. He'd been unable to move his head or see anything but the floating white faces before him, but he could hear the words over and over, _don't take my baby_, coming from different female voices. Closing his eyes couldn't block out the cries so he stared at Scully until his eyes watered.

"I had sex with one man though. And I don't have to be a doctor to attest that you contributed all the genetic material necessary and then some," she said painfully, folding her arms tight.

"But Scully, you-"

She raised a finger to stop him; a rare flash of temper.

He took a breath. "Scully, all I'm asking is that you think like the scientist that you are. How could this have happened?"

"It's happened to other women. Rachel and Rebekah were barren-"

"Oh my god, Scully."

"Exactly, Mulder. My God is a merciful god. And don't you think that we deserve mercy-"

He stared at the ceiling, not replying.

"You were the one who told me not to give up on a miracle-"

He snapped his head around to glare. "I said that to make you feel better! Not because I believed it!"

It was her turn to clamp her mouth closed and glower.

Long minutes ticked by. Finally Mulder said: "Okay."

"Okay, you believe me?" The pleading in her voice was more painful than the scalpel into his gut had been.

"Okay, I want to go home."

He heard the scraping of the chair as she stood. "They want to transfer you to Bethesda Medical Center first. It'll be closer to home, but we can't release you until more tests are conducted."

"Sure," he muttered.

He was utterly shocked when her lips pressed to the corner of his mouth. It hadn't been a plea. It had been the simple fact of her unspoken love and this he could believe.

The baby's lips slip off Scully's nipple and she wipes his mouth gently with the corner of her gown. She coos wordlessly to him and baby and mother's gazes lock as if involved in a telepathic conversation.

"I love you, Scully," Mulder says, seeing if it will make Scully feel as he did then.

Her brow furrows as she tries to find a place to put what he's just said. He realizes it's not her that she wants to hear that he loves. He's screwed up again. She and the baby are falling asleep though, and it's a discussion which will have to wait.

He takes the baby from her slack arms. "Let's get this guy to bed," he says softly.

"Burp him," she mumbles, pulling her gown back up.

"Oh, right," Mulder says. Gingerly, he puts the baby to his shoulder and begins to pat tentatively, just like he sees people do in movies. He's never done this with an actual child.

"Harder, Mulder," Scully says bossily.

Before he can follows her order, he hears a surprisingly deep burp in his ear. "Bros stick together," he says into the boy's ear, but Scully hears. Her smile makes his heart lurch.

"Do we need to do something about the diaper?" he asks. He feels as unsure and fumbling as he had when he had woken from his death.

"You'll know when it needs to changed."

Mulder cringes and pulls the blanket over the baby's bare chest. Yes, there will be plenty of stinky diapers to change soon enough.

Turning back to her bed, he repeats the gesture, covering her with the blanket as well. "You need to get rest."

She protests even as he eyes keep drifting closed.

"I'll be right here," he assures her. "I won't go to sleep."

"You must be tired too," she insists.

His answer is to kiss the top of her head. He straightens, and looks into her questioning eyes. Then he goes to the bassinet and kisses the baby's head too. Only then does Scully release a long sigh and close her eyes once and for all.

He tries to make himself comfortable in the chair. Now that she's not watching, he allows the tears to slide down his cheeks, even though the sight of them would probably make her happy. She would believe that he wept for the birth of their child but he can't lie to her. It's another wave of these uncontrollable emotions that have flooded him again and again since his return from the dead.

His feelings are tender, like his feet if stripped of shoes and he's trying to cross a rocky shore. He is a seven year old, sulking because while he was away at summer camp, all his stuff-friends, home, job-got drawn into some other orbit. And Dana Scully is that glowing sun. Skinner looming over her, glowering down like Uranus's large body. This Mars, John Doggett, with his sharp gaze drawn to her again and again. The whirling asteroids, the Gunmen, _his friends_ first, fussing and hovering over Scully and taking her side..He nearly goes blind with rage at that one. If anyone should be horrified at Scully's pregnancy, it should be those three. Instead, they carry her grocery bags and try to keep him from seeking the truth.

Yes, he's been having a child-like tantrum-not angry, not unhappy, but good old-fashioned, throwing stuff in his room, mad.

And through it all, Scully's been patient, understanding, even smiling at his painful jokes at her child's paternity. Hell, he would have kicked his own ass if he had the guts these days. Perhaps she had focused on the fact that very soon, she'd be having an even more helpless baby to care for and had little interest in catering to his needs.

His gaze goes to the baby. He would not be jealous of an innocent child. He would not. Then he looks at slumbering Scully. She always appeared so tiny and helpless in hospital beds; not his Scully at all. Perhaps it was similarities to another time, when she'd lay dying, that's kept him on edge.

She'd been just as determined then to follow her own truth, just as she is now with her baby. As much as she obviously still loved Mulder, he could come along for the ride or else she'd leave him by the roadside.

He wipes away his fresh tears. Yep, he's nothing but a big baby himself.

All he'd had was his love for her to survive, but even that had finally failed him. He'd given up and begged for death and it had mercifully come. His first thought on waking was that he'd have to confess to Scully, and how would she react to his abandonment...Only to have her steal his emotional spotlight with her own shocking reveal.

After his initial rebuke, she hadn't even bothered to try and convince him. Now in retrospect, he has to wonder if she'd sensed how skittish that he was and had played it nonchalant. After all, glacial had been the pace for their romantic relationship. With the speed and dignity of two Galapagos tortoises, they'd finally mated.

He'd hidden out in his apartment, putting everything back exactly the way it was before, allowing dust to settle on surfaces and bought a new mollie. But he couldn't help but be drawn to her apartment door...

He had held up a bag to her peephole. That got the door opened. He sees that the usually well put together Scully had moved into a fuzzy robe and slippers phase. With her rounded middle, she reminded him of a stuffed toy; he wanted to squeeze her until she squeaked.

"Donuts," he offered.

She showed the briefest of rueful grins, but didn't invite him in or accept his offering.

"You don't want a donut?" he said plaintively.

"Just something my mother said," she replied with a shake of her head.

He shifted uncertainly on his feet. "Okay, well, I guess I'll go on home then."

Giving a slight eye roll, she held the door open wide enough for him to enter. "Come in," she said ungraciously.

Dropping onto the sofa and tossing down the greasy bag on her coffee table, he had stared at his clenched hands. Now that he'd entered, he had no idea why he was there and what he wanted.

He'd been surprised when she comes up behind him and ran her fingers through his hair in that achingly familiar motion; sometimes meant to arouse, other times to sooth his spirit. It only broke his heart now.

"What can I help you with, Mulder?" Her tone was neutral, but when his gaze shoots up to meet hers, her eyes were filled with pain. He'd hurt her deeply and nothing he said will change that. So he might as well keep up his pursuit of the truth, regardless of her reaction.

Before he could speak, she did. "You want proof, right?"

He nodded.

She went to her desk and removed a folder from a drawer. "I had an amniocentesis test." Sitting beside him, she flipped the papers over until she comes to one with black dots lined up together. "Here's the fetus's DNA sample...And mine...And yours that we had on file."

"And it says that I am the father."

"Yes." There's no triumph in the word.

"But?"

She looks out across the room. "After I had this test, I came to distrust the doctor who drew the sample; I can't confirm it's my baby's."

"So now what?"

"I wait until the baby is born. I can't risk another test."

"All right." He leaned back into the deep cushions and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. The seat shifted as she rose. When he heard the clicking of the VCR, he lowered his hands.

She was cueing up the TV.

"This is the latest sonogram," she said, still dispassionate.

Balancing on the edge of the coffee table, she traced the shape on the screen for him. "Here's the head-"

He came around to sit on the floor beside her. "It looks large," he said cautiously.

Her hand settled to his head and ruffled through his hair again, but this time, he had the impression that she was making a point about his large-sized noggin.

He watched the white blob rotate before the sensor. "What is it-I mean the sex."

"I've been poked and prodded and tested for months. I want one surprise, dammit."

"Okay...But that-" He pointed at the screen as the blob turns again.

"It's a foot, Mulder."

"I was just thinking, like father, like son..."

The hand in his hair tugged and he tipped his head up to grin. He'd made Scully smile for only the second time since he opened his eyes. Cupping her cheek, he drew her face down to his.

He was surprised again. She dived into his mouth hungrily and he remembered that he has been gone for months. While he was taking his dirt nap, she had been living alone.

Billy Miles sloughed his skin to be a super soldier. Mulder's inner core seemed to be a selfish bastard. He kissed her back like the long-lost lover that he is, but broke it by struggling to his feet.

"I better go. Got some things to follow up on."

She flicked off the TV. "Sure."

"Can I take the tape?"

"You want to have it checked out," she said, her voice tired.

"No, I'd like to watch it again. I'll bring it back tomorrow."

The sound of ejection was loud and nearly covered the sound of her sniffling.

She walked him to the door. He cradled her to his side. Her changed shape had taken some getting used to, but he found that if he dipped his hip just so, she still fit close.

"I believe...In you, Scully. That's all I had during my abduction," he murmured in her ear. "_All_ I had."

"I understand," she promised.

"I don't see how you can-"

"I understand," she reminded him firmly and he clutched the plastic video tape like a tiny lifeboat. He almost told her everything right then, but chickened out and had fled. With her pregnancy, Scully needed a protector, not some basketcase.

Some paragon like John Doggett. Mulder may have had trouble figuring out what was going on at first, but caught on to this guy's feelings for Scully pretty quickly. Oh wait, that was _Dana_.

Mulder shifts on his chair, seeking that sore spot on his hip, just to grind his irritation a bit deeper. John Doggett with his big house full of empty bedrooms and a backyard, perfect for a swingset. And who'd had to point out to Mulder that after the baby was here, what then? So intent on the fetus only as a form growing within Scully, Mulder hadn't given a moment's thought to the time when one life became two.

He looks at the wall clock. Five thirteen. Every minute is ticking forward and he has no idea what does happen next.

The door bursts open and he leaps to his feet, ready to meet the threat. It's just Maggie Scully, with her light floral scent and soft body pulling him into a hug before rushing first to the bassinet, then to Scully's side. Her daughter struggles out of sleep and to sit up.

"So much happier reason than the last time I drove hours to find you in a hospital," Maggie says, tears in her eyes as she settles beside Scully.

Mulder stands, shifting on his feet. Maggie Scully always has this effect on him. She smiles up at him; he's in her good graces for the moment. She's been giving him the side eye since his return. The unasked questions hung in the air during their mutual visits to Scully, until he'd flee back to his apartment.

She pulls a bag from her deep coat pocket. The fragrance wakes his hunger. "The only place open this early was the donut shop," she says.

For some reason, Scully went pink. "Mom," she hisses.

"Do you want one?" Mulder asks, muffled because he's already crammed a glazed raised into his mouth. He extends the bag.

"I'm fine," Scully says stiffly.

Maggie hops off the bed. "May I pick him up?" she whispers.

"Of course," says Scully, lying back on the pillows. "If I get the second turn."

"And you're third in line?" Maggie says to Mulder.

Envious of her confidence, Mulder watches Maggie swing the baby up to her shoulder to let him breathe in her scent. Only then does she cradle him before her so that she can look at his features, stroking his nose and chin.

The baby's eyes opens and he looks back, solemn.

"Have you got a name for him yet?"

Scully doesn't answer. "Who called you?"

"Assistant Director Skinner," Maggie replies, pursing her lips at Mulder.

His shoulders slump. He shoves another donut in his mouth, desolate. Grace was short-lived.

"i've brought the car seat and the baby bag and some clothes for you," Maggie says briskly.

His hand fumbles at the bottom of the bag. No more donuts. He'd dragged Scully out of her apartment without even a change of underwear.

"That's great, Mom. It's nearly six. I'm sure we can check out soon. I'm fine, the baby's fine-"

Maggie's not giving up. "The name?"

"_We_ haven't decided," Scully says.

Mulder has to take deep breaths to stop those damn tears from coming back. "It's your choice, Scully," he says. He can't make any demands. Maggie starts to chatter about all the names that she's thought of, and Scully smiles over her mother's shoulder at him.

She's sailed along like some great frigate, and he's been bobbing in her wake. The obvious parallel to his search for the truth, with him expecting her to faithfully be at his side in the quest, hasn't been lost on him. She has seemed to accept what he was able to give her so far, but this wasn't a matter of a man fearing some other man was a baby's father. After all, Bill Mulder had raised another man's son.

Instead, Mulder was overwhelmed with terror for her life and what would happen to her if there was something wrong with her son. He's heard stories of how close to a breakdown his flinty Scully had been when she had to be dragged from his dead body.

Like anyone recovering, he'd had good days and bad. Seeing her back in the hospital, her pregnancy in jeopardy, nurses keeping him away for not saying the word "yes", he took refuge in the familiar; work.

Finally, he had left a crime scene and the pain coming off John Doggett to see Scully in the hospital. He had to remember that he had his woman and his perhaps child right there and he knew that made him an idiot for being away.

When he peeked into Scully's room, he could tell that she's been waiting for him, but there was no reproach in her, "Where have you been?"

His babbling about the case sounded pointless even to his ears. He tried to turn it into his noble pursuit to aid a fellow agent. He reached a crescendo of self-righteousness: "You can't help a man who can't help himself."

She gazed back levelly. "He's worth the effort, Mulder."

He knew that they weren't talking about Doggett anymore. He hated when that happens.

Flat on her back in her hospital bed, her protruding belly had been impossible to avoid. He had willed himself not to stare, he would not stare...He was staring...And he must touch. He hadn't touched her stomach since that first day when she'd put his hand on it. Jeez, he'd reacted worse than Ruskin on his wedding night at the sight of his nude bride. It was a perfectly natural female body...

He gingerly lay his palm on the firm mound. Her glowing smile showed him that even the tiniest effort on his part had its rewards.

Once, he had fought with her about the source of her cancer; it had been very important to be right at the time. Now, he'd shut the fuck up and let her believe in her baby. It was time for Fox Mulder to be a grownup-nothing like a baby on the way to make that abundantly clear.

When he'd finally been able to take her home, her apartment had smelled of stale, abandoned pizza. "Damn, let me get rid of that and go out a fresh one," Mulder said quickly, grabbing the cardboard box.

When he returned, she was in her robe and slippers. Her mouth turned down at the label on the pizza box. Mulder fussed in the kitchen, getting plates and napkins.

"You miss your regular pizza man, don't you?" He can't do anything right.

"That's okay, he's coming by later." This new Scully was unsettling. Not only does she let his shit slide, she expected him to take her shit on a regular basis. All the other men in her life have obviously been spoiling her rotten and she had gotten used to it.

She finally had the chance to open his gift and appeared enthusiastic at the sight of the ratty old doll. The way that she said that she'd been wondering what on earth he could have given her suggested that her imagination went in another whole direction than stained family heirloom. Seeing it in the light of her clean, well-lit apartment, it looked like what it was. Coming out of a cardboard box in his place, it had been enrobed with all its history; his great-grandmother's journey from Holland, his mother's careful care of it, Samantha only allowed to touch it, not play with it and he not allowed to touch at all, and yet he was the last one, the only one, to touch it now. He had to pass it on...To his own child... He tried the term out in his mind.

Scully rubbed salt in his wounds, saying that he'd given her the courage to believe. Yes, he saw the utter irony in his inability to believe in a miracle for them, but that doll told its tale of life's hard truths.

One last press into the raw spot: "I hope that's a gift I can pass on," she said. As if anyone would wish a child to be as deluded as he could be on some of his better days. He had nothing to respond beyond a weak smile.

"I guess you will want to get to bed," he finally said, his voice strained. "Your own bed."

"That sounds wonderful," she agreed.

He tugged her out of the deep sofa cushions and led her to the bedroom as though she didn't know the way. Helping her onto the high mattress, he pulled off her slippers, then quickly retrieved some socks for her chilled feet before tucking them under the covers.

"Thanks," she murmured.

He wavered on his feet beside the bed. "You're welcome," he said formally.

"You look tired too." She was gazing up at him with her drowning pool eyes, the expression that always aroused him in the past and made him feel like a sick bastard now.

"It's been a long couple of days...Week," he admitted.

"Why don't you lay down then?" she suggested.

"I can sleep on the couch...In case you want anything later." He actually toed the carpet.

She was done pandering to his delicate nerves. "Mulder, get in bed," she commanded.

He scampered around to the other side of the bed, kicking off his shoes and wiggling out of his clothes. Her giggles let him know that she appreciated his enthusiasm.

Rolling over to face him, she cradled his cheek with her cool hand. "Please lift your leg," she said.

Confused, he complied. She slipped her leg between his and all system went on red alert. He forced his breathing to slow. She gave a low moan. "That feels better," she drawled sleepily. "I usually put a pillow between my legs to sleep, but you're a better substitute."

Oh. He was her big pillow.

Her arm slid under his, and drew him flush to her body. Not good. He'd been pathetically grateful to wake one morning in the hospital with an erection. The number of scars and marks on his genitals had been terrifying, particularly when he had Scully and two other doctors standing over him with the charts in hand, all their brows furrowed in concern. This was not the way a lover should find out that her man was now a eunuch.

But even with renewed function, he hadn't been able to even summon one masturbatory session, when the moment that he closed his eyes, his usual fantasy of naked, lithe Scully took on a whole new rounded dimension.

He was adapting, however. Just needed some time to get over the shock, apparently. Her breasts pressed to his chest were fuller and heavier, not a bad thing. Her skin, that had always smelled briskly fresh, scrubbed clean of the scent of death, was now warm and yummy, for lack of a better term, like vanilla and brandy- intoxicating.

He buried his nose in her hair and breathed in.

Her mouth went to his ear. "I want to make love to you so badly, Mulder."

He had gone momentarily white-blind in the dark bedroom. Their bodies twined, those strong thighs of her holding him deep within her, their mouths panting together-

Her voice was filled with regret: "But-"

"Of course," he babbled, trying to wiggle away. "I understand-"

There was the Doctor Scully voice, explaining something about premature labor triggered by orgasm, and the risk of another partial separation of her placenta and all he could think about was finding a way to induce a reverse erection, where he somehow could retract his entire penis up into his abdomen. He just wanted to lie with her here in this bed, but this bed which had meant only one thing in the past year-sex..really, really fantastic sex.

"I could help you out here..." Her tone was only slightly less clinical as her hand slipped between their bodies.

He scooted out of reach. "Scully," he warned her. "I've been around while you're 'helping' me out, remember? Your reaction is just as enthusiastic. There's still be a risk of contractions."

Her low chuckle in the dark was so seductive that the problem is nearly resolved right then and there.

"I guess you're right..." she mused, her voice husky. Her hand moved back up to rest over his heart.

He could hear sleep overcoming her and was so happy. Stroking her hair and peppering light kisses on her face, he eased her into slumber and he soon followed.

"Mulder?" woke him sometime in the night. Their bodies had shifted to spoon, her favorite sleeping position, but his leg was still doing its duty between hers.

He was instantly awake and his hands went to her belly as though he can feel any disruption in the force. "Is something wrong?"

"Could you get me a piece of pizza?"

His head fell back on the pillow. "Sure," he mumbled.

As he stumbled toward the kitchen, he took comfort in knowing what little he could give her seemed to be enough at the time.

Maggie hands the baby from Scully to him. "Here's your little man," she says, and it does seem that easy when he hears it aloud.

The journey back to DC is hours long and he and Maggie take turn driving. If anyone had said he would spend eight hours in a car with his sort-of-mother-in-law, a tired Scully and her frequent naps, and newborn, he would have put it up there with the drive down to the team-building weekend that never happened. But it's oddly comfortable, as though traveling into a vision of another life. Maggie knows how to chatter harmlessly from years as a military wife. Scully has obviously warned her mother off while he was throwing around his illegitimate FBI agent identity to get out of the hospital without filing a birth certificate.

"Let's deal with it when we get home," Scully had said, not meeting his gaze. He knows then, when she does complete it, the father section will be blank and the last name will be Scully.

"Mom, drop us off at the FBI. Mulder's car is there."

He glances up in the rear view mirror in surprise. She's finished feeding the boy and is strapping him back into his carseat.

"Honey, what do you mean? You're surely not going to work?" Maggie asks, astonished.

"Of course not," Scully says, with that slight stutter of untruthfulness. "Mulder just needs to get his car."

As soon as her mother drove way, Scully says, "Bring the baby," tensely.

"Where are we going, Scully?" he asks, although he has an inkling.

"To the lab," she replies.

They hurry through the quiet halls of the Bureau headquarters. The few agents there after working hours give them curious looks, but no one dares to stop them. They slip into the DNA testing laboratory. It's mercifully empty and Scully locks the door behind them before turning on the lights.

After snapping on rubber gloves, she lays out three sterile swabs and motions Mulder to sit beside the baby. His carseat is up on the table like a throne.

"What is this, Scully?" Mulder asks, even though he knows.

"A DNA test." She's coming at his mouth with the swab.

He takes her wrist, stopping her. "Scully, we don't need to do this. I don't need this. Really," he whispers, pain closing his throat.

She strokes his stubbled cheek. "But I do."

After a long moment, he opens her mouth for her to wipe the inside of his cheek. She seals his sample, then quickly replicates the process with the baby and her.

While she performs the test, he walks the boy around the lab, showing him the specimens inside jars, contorted in horrifying ways. He's getting comfortable to the frustrating combination of the dead weight and squirming limbs while carrying the baby. His basic fear of dropping the baby is ebbing.

"Mulder."

He knows she has her results. He hurries to her side.

"Scully, I mean it. It doesn't-"

"He's our son." She leans her forehead into his chest beside the baby's kicking legs.

_Their_ baby. He cups the back of her neck and kisses the top of head.

She clears her throat and stand back. "I need to clean this up and we should get out of here."

"Scully..." He's puzzled.

"You need to go to your apartment and pack everything."

"Right now?" he says with a laugh, just so happy that she wants him to come home with her and their baby.

"Yes." Her gaze burns bright and he can never deny that look.

"Okay. But I may be all night."

She nods. He smiles before giving her a kiss. "It's worth it. We'll have the rest of our lives," he dares to say, and her eyes fill with tears.

He drops Scully and their boy off at her apartment and is driving to his when his phone rings. Assuming it's her to tell him that she's changed her mind and wants him to turn around, he answers with a cheery, "Yes?"

"Fox Mulder." The voice is flat and contemptuous.

"Yeah?" he says cautiously.

"It's Deputy Director Kersh."

"Yeah." He can be just as nonplussed. This man wasn't his supervisor anymore.

"I understand congratulations are in order."

Mulder stared at his phone. Scully had scrubbed down that lab and taken the results with her-

"Let me offer you some advice."

"What?" Mulder growls.

"Get out of town before someone puts you under the ground, this time permanently."

Furious, Mulder can barely keep his car on the road. "Thanks for the advice, Kersh, but you're not making any threats that I haven't heard a hundred times before."

"It's not a threat, Mr. Mulder. It's a warning." Kersh sounds utterly bored as though reading off an index card someone has left by his desk.

Mulder hangs out without another word. He doesn't have time for bullshit from shadowy conspiracy figures. He's got fifteen years of crap to clear out of an apartment in a night.

x

The next morning, he meets the Gunmen leaving Scully's bedroom, there to visit the blessed event. They know to clear out; it's his turn.

Uncertain all over again, Mulder crosses the threshold. "How's everybody doing?" He'd wanted to call every hour the night before, but had feared waking them.

Sitting on the edge of the bed with the baby, her face shows that she'd missed him just as much. "We're doing just fine."

Yes, they are we now, not us. He's okay with that.

She brings the baby over for him and he peeks under the blanket. The boy starts to fuss. "Hey now," he says, trying to sound fatherly. "None of that." This effort gets a tentative smile from Scully.

He whispers, "Hi," to both of them. It's new, all over again. Perhaps this morning can be a fresh beginning.

He asks the question that should have been his first that day when he learned that she was pregnant. The sort of question that everyone asks expectant mothers: "What're you gonna call him?"

"William. After your father."

His head shoots up and he meets her gentle eyes. His last name wouldn't be on the baby's birth certificate, but she will acknowledge that this is his son in another way.

He was so grateful, he has to take refuge in humor. "Well, I don't know. He's got your coloring and your eyes...but he looks suspiciously like Assistant Director Skinner." Now that the baby's features have stopped looking squished and his head has taken a round shape, the size of William's nose was all the confirmation he needs; no DNA test necessary.

He's surprised by what she says next: "I don't understand, came to take him from us. Why they didn't-" She finally shows her fear, that thing she's been hiding from him since he returned.

He can't stop looking at his son, noticing the strong brow and creased forehead-a thinker. "I don't quite understand that either. Except that maybe he isn't what they thought he was," he muses. "That doesn't make him any less of a miracle though, does it?" He finally pulls his gaze away from his baby to look at Scully, acknowledging what she'd hoped for when he'd first awoken.

And yet she says with a humorless huff of a chuckle, "From the moment I became pregnant, I feared the truth and how and why..."

He wraps his mind around that. Scully hadn't feared her child was an alien product, but that her God would have chosen to give her this gift. That was a weight just as great as the one he had carried.

"And I know that you feared it too," she says.

He had wondered how she had been putting up with his crappy attitude for all these weeks. She hasn't faulted him because she shared his uncertainty.

"I think what we feared were the possibilities," he says, his voice low. "The truth we both know."

"Which is what?" She looks at him levelly, ready for one of his truth-telling moments.

He shows, rather than tells her. Leaning across their son, he lets his lips settle on hers, waiting to see what she thinks of his theory before he presses his point.

When he lessens the pressure, waiting for her response, it is her hand on his elbow and a squeeze, and he sinks back into her mouth, remembering, remembering.._.I love you_ whispered in his ear when she thought he was asleep.

William gives a gurgle, breaking the moment.

"You'll get your turn," Mulder says before dropping his lips to the boy's downy head.

Scully snuggles closer, their three bodies twined and swaying.

"You have to go," she murmurs in his ear.

He laughed. "I just got here! Do you need something at the store?"

"No, Mulder. You have to leave; to go into hiding."

He steps back; he needs a clear head. "What the hell are you talking about?" He's holding their son out of her reach.

Her hands, the fingers white, are clasped as if in prayer. "Those people didn't take me or my baby. But now they know what you are capable of doing. The DNA test shows it. You have made a barren woman pregnant-"

"So what does that make me?" he sputters.

She raises her eyebrows.

"Scully, that Rohrer person, the super soldier, told Doggett that your chip made your pregnant. I just gave my donation in the usual manner," he protests.

"Those super soldiers have lied all along," she insists. "But you have the power to create life where no life could grow. They will do anything to eliminate you or worse, turn you into one of their lab rats-" She's started to pace in her agitation.

There's no way he's going to tell her about Kersh's threat. He has to make her see sense. "Scully, how can I protect you and William if I'm not here-"

"you will be searching for the truth, Mulder. You will preserve his future by finding the answers. You can't do that here, helping me with midnight feedings."

"But it's all I want."

"We will have it," she promises, moving back into his embrace. "When your work is done. And you can't do it if you remain here to be killed." She takes William from him, and he immediately misses the weight.

Wrapping his arms around her and the baby, he buries his face in her hair. "Don't make me leave," he rasps.

"Let's have a day," she says. "A day of being together as a family. Then you have to go."

He squeezes his eyes shut. Twenty-four hours. Not enough. "Two," he begs. "Give me two."

"Two," she agrees.

~ End Part Four


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: OMG, this story! I thought it would be some light easy-to-toss-off ficlets...Particularly this part; 250 words, max! Then I realized this character's investment in the scenario, but that required me to view a bunch of episodes, doing research and reacquainting myself with the canon...Thank goodness, only one more part to go! And that will be easier. Or it better. *eye twitch*_

Part 5:

Part 5:

"Apparently someone's made a New Year's resolution," said Harris with mild interest.

Kerry peered over his shoulder at the surveillance camera monitor. After watching for a while, he finally cringed. "That's why you should have sex more than once a decade. Jeez, they're gonna hurt themselves if they keep this up."

Minutes ticked by. "You owe me five bucks," said Harris, holding out his empty hand while shoving an Oreo in his mouth with the other. "I called it. He cried first."

"Son of a bitch," grumbled Kerry, digging in his pocket.

He looked at Spender, sitting across the room and smoking silently. "Well boss, is this part of the plan or a problem?"

Expelling a long stream of smoke, Spender said, "I can't say at this time."

He walked out the cramped room without looking at the screen.

Plans; he had had many plans over the decades, but the goal had always been the same. Now, with few options left, his focus had narrowed, becoming fundamental and primal.

Eternal life. Living forever through a child of the child of his blood.

Breeding stock had been one of his specialties for the Syndicate. He'd judged Fox Mulder to be too unpredictable for a reliable donor despite his physical and intellectual superiority to many humans. Dana Scully had been another matter.

She shared Fox's intelligence and instinctual smarts so essential for survival. But she'd been deemed much more suitable with her family background of adherence to government authority and her ambition, both qualities Fox had rejected earlier.

Spender had had her steered to the X-files assignment, hoping her immature physical appearance would trigger Fox's sister fixation. Once she was close to him, he would be susceptible to her information-gathering directed by Spender's backroom machinations. Previously, Diana Fowley, with her hard, brittle edges, had failed. Even when Fox had fucked her, he couldn't be turned to the right side. Being a woman under it all, Diana had stormed off rather than be just a part of Fox's life instead of all of it.

Spender had expected that Dana Scully would be able to synthesize Mulder's discoveries into useful data for the Project and eventually move into the cadre of brilliant doctors working on hybridization. When she had not cooperated, he found a different sort of stable in which to place her; as a broodmare. Her genetic material had been very useful over the years.

Then two years ago, Dana had forced Spender to make another choice between his commitment to the Project and his personal loyalties:

"Female X3112 is seeking in vitro fertilization; didn't think we'd see that one come in," Richmond had said during his weekly report to the group.

Spender had remained at the coffee carafe, his back turned to the other men but he could sense that Richmond was looking at him as he spoke.

From behind a veil of cigar smoke, a disembodied voice asked: "That's the FBI agent who works with Fox Mulder?"

Richmond confirmed it. "We can have her fertilized eggs ready once we've directed her toward Zeus-let's see if we can get her with Parenti," he added.

Drifting to the window, Spender had watched the rowers on the river below. Their long oar strokes barely caused a ripple in the water and yet they moved with great speed and determination.

Weeks more of reports and now Spender made himself face the group and Richmond as the underling read from his files. "No success with X3112," the man had said with disgust. "Parenti confirmed that the the next stage fertilization was successful with her eggs and the alien DNA-there were some concerns after the problems with the first round in the nineties. But no implantation has taken."

"These embryos aren't nickels to be dropped in a gumball machine," chided Markle, a wizen man who only spoke to fret.

Lighting a cigarette, Spender dared to place some doubt in the other minds. "She's reaching the outer limits of acceptable age. I'm not surprised at the lack of success."

Richmond had curled his lip. "Perhaps we'd do better fertilizing with the sperm provided by her partner; the mobility is excellent and a very high rate."

Although other men at the table chuckled, Markle was not amused. "A human child is of no use to us-"

Spender had inhaled and only Richmond had seemed to notice his brief smile. And now Fox and Dana had reacted to the failure at artificial procreation by occasionally and desperately engaging in the biological act. Shadow puppets on the wall; melded hands forming one body from two bodies but incapable of creating a third, so returning to two clenched fists. They truly were two of the most enigmatic individuals that Spender had ever encountered.

It had not been easy to lure Dana away. But over the years, he'd gained sufficient knowledge of her mental workings to anticipate her reaction to his seductive overture of the cure for all human disease. Although only fragments were rooted in truth, he'd always found the most successful lies had their foundation in reality. Spender discovered it was easy to play devotion to Dana even while she was unconscious.

His team didn't have much time for their task, but they were accustomed to working quickly. Then everything came to a sudden halt.

"Mr. Spender, there's something odd on the sonogram," Dr. Fallbrook had said.

He'd been standing at Dana's head, behind the drape covering her exposed genitals and the invasion of the internal probe. "What is it?" he said, leaning in to only focus on the fluttering monitor screen.

"This can't be-"

"What?" Spender repeated, impatient.

"Her ovaries are severely damaged, as we knew, so this shouldn't be possible-"

"Doctor," Spender said dangerously.

"It's an egg. In her right fallopian tube."

"We took all her ova-"

Dr. Fallbrook nodded. "I'm aware of that, sir. I can't explain this-"

Spender fumbled for his cigarettes, then remembered that he'd tossed them away for her.

"Mr. Spender, what do you want us to do?" the other specialist demanded to know. He had been waiting with an egg from a younger subject, fertilized with Fox Mulder's sample. Another gamble; Dana Scully would not abort a pregnancy that should not be. "We don't have a lot of time," he added pointlessly.

The only reason Spender was still alive today was the ability to process new information quickly and change his course of action. "Let's abandon the procedure. Take her to her room before she awakens," he said.

"Another attempt to access her during her next cycle will be risky," the shadow-cloaked doctor said, his tone edgy.

"We won't take that risk," Spender agreed.

Fallbrook continued to manipulate the sonogram wand in Dana's body. "How could this happen? I'm certain it's a viable egg. I've been doing this for twenty-five years after all. I can spot them in my sleep."

"The hand of God?" Spender suggested, meaning to be facetious, but hearing something else in his voice. While disrobing her form for the procedure, the fastidious doctors had removed Dana's necklace. He lifted it from atop the pile of her belongings, dangling it from one nicotine-stained finger. "We don't have much time. Let's get her dressed," he repeated.

His final plan; leaving it all to God's will. What else do dying men do?

x

Richmond heaves his body over the top of the ladder and into the dark stone-walled chamber. He collapses, sweat streamed down his face. A woman has watched his ascent through a window. She moves to stand over him.

"Water," he moans.

Slowly, she retrieves a ladle from a large barrel kept deep in the shadows. He drains it immediately and holds it out for more.

After refilling it, she waits, hands clasped at her waist.

"Hot as hell out there," Richmond gasps.

A wheezing chuckle ripples from out of the deep shadows.

The woman holds out her hand expectantly.

The visitor wriggles out of his backpack and opens it. The box of Hostess powdered sugar mini donuts is half-crushed, but the woman snatches it from his grip and retreats.

"And for you," he said, tossing a carton of Morleys into the dimness.

"Thank you," Spender drawls. He'd always been proud of his melodious voice, and doesn't like the rasp that's always rattling behind his tracheotomy now.

After refilling the water cup, the man sits on a rock bench. "I have news."

Spender leans forward, despite not wanting to appear eager. The isolation which protects him also keeps him from obtaining his beloved information. Until it was taken away, he had not realized he was as addicted as to nicotine.

The courier must sense his excitement and takes the time to drain the drinking cup before continuing. "Dana Scully had her baby."

Spender fumbles with the cigarette carton, tearing the cardboard with renewed strength. "What was it?"

"A boy." Richmond finds his own pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. "She named him William-for the father's father." There's a sick satisfaction in his voice.

Smoke swirls out of Spender's trac opening as he exhales. "As it should be," he says, giving nothing away. "Bill was a great man in his way."

"And we had a mishap while engaged in discussions with your son Jeffrey," the visitor adds.

"Is he alive?"

"In a form."

Spender nods. There's prices to be paid. Jeffrey wasn't worth much, having no more heft than a Canadian dime found at the bottom of his pocket. In the end, he has placed his genetic stake solely on a stronger horse and his chosen mate.

"How'd you do it?" asks the visitor.

"Do what?"

"I was there, you may remember. When we first performed the tests and genetic collection on Agent Scully. And I viewed her medical charts after her cancer treatment. She could not have children."

"You're not privy to all the plans, Richmond."

"That's what you say," the other man says levelly. "I have to believe another purpose was being served by Agent Scully's pregnancy."

"She's just one of the many," Spender said soothingly.

"No. The alien super soldiers found where she was hidden to give birth-"

Spender has to place the cigarette over the opening in his neck to keep a sound from escaping. Smoke billows around his face.

"But they chose not to take the baby." Richmond shrugs. "He appears to be nothing more than a human baby. I've seen the tests."

Exhaling, Spender takes a moment to form his response. "Then he is."

"But he can't be!" bursts out Richmond.

"What other explanation is there? Perhaps Dana sought fertility treatment at a source more trustworthy than Dr. Parenti."

Richmond loses his patience. "We would know! We were watching her day and night!"

Spender remains impassive. The woman returns from her room, the donut box now empty. She tosses it on a dead fire in the corner, then crouches by the doorway.

Richmond has fallen silent at her entrance but seeing her as no threat, resumes his questioning. "Did you do this? Did you endanger everything that we've worked for all these years...Now, when any false step would mean the extinction of the few of us remaining -"

Spender smiles, even though he knows that Richmond can't see his face in the dark. "Why would I do something like that?"

"I don't know," the other man admits in defeat. "Why do you do anything that you do?"

"To prepare for the inevitable."

"Your death," pronounces Richmond, stalking toward Spender.

"Oh, I'm not going anywhere." Spender tosses away his cigarette.

The woman, forgotten by Richmond, leaps. A flash of steel in the dimness, and then dark again as it is rammed between the visitor's ribs, finding his heart. He collapses silently.

Wiping the blade on her pants, she looks down at the body. "I guess I'll get a rope," she says with no emotion.

"Drop him into the shaft out back," says Spender, easing back into his seat. "We won't want a smell."

He allows her to do all the labor. He's too ill to assist. These days, he is nothing more than bones held in place by skin and the breathes he took. Each one is a treasure.

But he has the confirmation for which he's waited a long year. His genes will live on, more breaths taken every day, only stronger and deeper. At no point had he been certain the plan would work-and the best plans are just that, balanced on a fine blade. Fox's nobility, Dana's assumptions about that part of him; would the drumbeat of biological urges, deafening after seven years, be enough?

It had been. Spender had profiled Agent Scully, seeing her as his son never would-her black habit replaced by a revealing gown befitting her beauty and body. The power to entice and capture a man was there. Yes, the self-indulgent exercise had been a risk; would there be a setback when Dana returned?

But another success from a momentary failure; with anger had come renewed passion, stronger than before. A bit of uncertainty is a good thing for a man, Spender believed. Fox had been too certain of Dana for too long. It had been necessary for Fox to restake his claim thus increasing the opportunities for fertilization of those miracle eggs. And triumph, just before his son had been lost. If Spender hadn't believed in God before then...

He manages to stand and goes to Richmond's abandoned backpack. Perhaps there is more...His shaking fingers search each pocket. Finally, he discovers a crisp piece of thin cardboard with his yellowed fingertips.

When he pulls it out, he staggers to the doorway for the light, barely able to breathe. A surveillance photograph of a woman pushing a stroller down a busy DC street. The long lens means the focus is not sharp, but he can see a round face, pink cheeks and a small white fist waving at the sky.

A warrior had been born; the old king can die now.

~ End Part Five


	6. Chapter 6

Part Six:

Mulder can still smell Scully on his skin, feel her strong fingers in his hair and taste her fresh breath on his tongue. He chooses not dwell on the realization that his heightened sensory reaction probably means that he stinks and desperately needs to brush his teeth.

He spins to grin at Skinner, who still lurks in the shadows after Scully had been ordered away by the guards. His 'lawyer' can remain, needing the few hours they had to prepare for the tribunal.

"One down, one to go," he tells the other man.

"What?" Skinner says, squinting.

"I've held and kissed Scully. William's next."

Skinner just stares at him, his mouth slightly agape.

"You want your kiss after all?" Mulder can only laugh at Skinner's look of distaste. He can't stop his joy from bubbling up, despite all the weight remaining on his shoulders. He paces the small cell. "They probably won't let her bring a baby into this prison, but maybe to the trial-"

"Mulder...Fox."

Something in Skinner's voice makes Mulder stop in front of his friend. He blinks slowly, willing time to stop. Scully is in his arms again and this time, he feels despair bleeding from her limbs even as she desperately kissed him back. Finally, he states: "Something's happened to William." He doesn't bother making it a question.

"It's not that simple." Walter lifts his glasses and squeezes the bridge of his nose.

Mulder lunges against the iron door, his heart suddenly racing. "Scully!" he yells.

Skinner drags him away. "She's gone. I've told her to go home and get some rest before the trial begins."

"What happened," Mulder hisses. "Did they kill him?"

"He's alive. He's well," Skinner assures him in a rush.

"Then what's wrong!?"

"Scully had to place him with another family-"

Place him with a family-this sounds as though their son was a stray dog. Mulder cocks his head, trying to comprehend the words and knock down his rising fury,flames in his heart.

Skinner steps close and grips his arm tightly, as though to hold him to the ground. "They came again and again, Mulder. As close as a man with a pillow over William's face before Scully shot him."

When Mulder closes his eyes, he hears Scully screaming anger and fear, feels the concussion of the shots in their bedroom, feels the warm blood splatter his skin.

"They wanted you dead too. They managed to kidnap William once, putting Doggett in a coma in the process-"

"Son of a bitch!" Mulder whirls away from Skinner's grasp but there's nowhere to go in the dank cell.

"They said that they'd give William back if Scully would bring them your severed head. This was obviously about more than just taking a baby that they thought was special-"

"He's just a little boy." Mulder leans against the wall, no strength in his body.

Skinner looks uncomfortable "No...He had some powers..."

"Powers?" Mulder now feels nauseous. He never should have left. He should have gone Cro-Magnon in Scully's ass, dragged her off to a cave...

"At least others thought he did...These people thought he would play a role in stopping the invasion...And Scully saw some things that she couldn't explain...Even Jeffrey Spender showed up, acting on what he believed William was-"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Mulder spits the curses out like blood-soaked glass.

"There was only one way to stop it."

"No, there was another way. I could have come back."

"Scully wouldn't let you," Skinner points out, ever practical. "She wavered once, and looked what happened-"

Mulder just shakes his head petulantly. "I shoulda been a man-"

Skinner reminds him: "She told you that you were no good to her and William dead. That's still true. William can't be with you two, but you can only preserve this world for him to grow up in if you're alive."

"Where is he?" Mulder grinds out.

"We don't know. Scully had me set up the adoption, but I went through a middleman to assure that even under torture, I couldn't reveal his location."

Mulder's on the move again, but now his arms are swinging too, his clenched fists coming close to the concrete walls.

"Hey there." Skinner steps between him and the wall and puts up his large hands. "You gonna punch something, hit my hand. No sense breaking your knuckles right now."

This sounds like a great idea. Mulder puts all his power behind a one-two bevy to Skinner's solid palms, only to stagger backward in pain. "Son of a bitch," he gasps. "Might as well have hit the wall."

Skinner shrugs. "Got it out of your system though?"

"Yeah, I guess." Mulder wipes the tears from his eyes.

Briefly wrapping him in a hug, Skinner says in his ear: "You gotta be strong for Dana. Or I'll kick your ass."

Mulder steps back and looks the other man in the eye. "Is there something you need to tell me, Walter?"

Incredulous, Skinner raises his eyebrows. "You were the one kissing her, Mulder. Tell me if anything's changed since you left."

"No."

"All right then. I gotta go. Turns out some crazy bastard has asked him to be his legal representation-" Skinner checked his watch. "And I've got until eight hundred hours to obtain my law degree."

"Thanks, Walter. For everything."

Skinner just waves him off and leaves the cell without a backward look. Mulder slides down the wall to the bare floor, now his familiar bed. Just what he deserves; cold, painfully hard and unyielding.

It seems as though he's just closed his eyelids when a sound breaks into his roiling thoughts. It's the crunching of sunflower seeds.

He looks up. His father leans against the door, fastidiously spitting the shells into his palm.

"What do you want?" Mulder asks.

Bill raises his eyebrows. "I thought you were the one who wanted to talk to me."

Six or seven years ago, yes. Today, not so much. He'd found almost too many answers over time.

"Why would I want to do that?" he challenged.

"Looking for advice, one no good father to another?" suggests Bill.

Mulder stares up at the ceiling. The old man has a point.

Might as well start at what was foremost on his mind right now. "How'd you do it, Dad? How'd you sleep again after what you did?"

"I had a higher purpose which I was pursuing," Bill says evenly, crunching seeds between his words. "I couldn't allow my personal feelings to cloud that. And now you, although you weren't there to make the decision, have made the same sacrifice."

His old man always could find the slightest of papercuts to rub salt in. Mulder says: "I've been traded for again. Scully gave away our boy so I might live." He struggles to his feet. "When the fuck-" He punctuates every word with spit. "The fuck is everyone going to figure out I'm not worth it!?"

"When are you going to figure out that you are?"

Mulder just slumps against the wall. If these apparitions are his sub-conscious, this one seems to be doing some unwanted self-analysis.

"You were such a good boy, Fox. You don't remember that, but you were. You shared with your sister; most boys aren't like that. Just ask your Aunt Flora what sort of big brother I was-"

"Aunt Flora died in 1998," Mulder says hollowly.

Bill shrugs. "Take my word for it. I was a little jerk. But after Samantha was gone, you got even worse. No worries about you becoming a juvenile delinquent from the trauma. Top of your classes, working for the government..."

Only his father would sound confounded by a son being a credit to the family name. And yet Mulder had kept seeking his approval, and that of men like him.

Mulder wanders the cell, ignoring his father for the moment. He and Samantha had shared a room until her disappearance. His parents had been in the process of setting up his 'big boy' bedroom when she'd been taken. There were moments of confusion afterward for Mulder, where he kept hearing them saying that it was time to separate the siblings and that somehow explained where Samantha had gone. She wasn't abducted; she was just in another room. He refused to use his new bedroom for months, doing as he'd once told Scully, closing his eyes before entering their shared bedroom to will his sister to be in her single bed to the left of window, slumbering under the pink-ruffled bedspread. Now it all seemed like something a psychologist would have a field day with and probably explained a lot about his intimacy issues and problems developing positive sexual relationships, but right now, it just caused him to start crying again.

His father obviously wasn't going away. "You remember when I'd bring a box of donuts home from Hansen's Bakery? It was down the street from the State Department-"

"Yeah," Mulder says listlessly.

"You'd let Samantha have the first pick, only she liked the same kind that you did; with the colored sprinkles. She'd always break it in half-she was a good kid too-but the point is, Fox, you need to be a selfish bastard every now and then."

"What's your point, Dad?"

"Get out of this place. Go home to your woman. Make love to her. Forget all this."

"All this? You mean this hell that you wrought; you and men like you?" Mulder turns his back on his father. What measures that Bill Mulder had done to stop the invasion hadn't been enough. He's still cleaning up the mess.

"You've been doing the same thing for years now, without much success," Bill reminds him. "Let me just point out, that when you finally allowed yourself to be selfish-falling into bed with Dana Scully-something very wonderful and earth-changing happened."

Mulder shakes his head.

"At least admit that you wanted that baby just as strongly as you want to stop the invasion-" Bill urges him.

"Scully wanted it," he says automatically. "I've just been along for the ride."

Bill smiles craftily. "Remember where I live now, son. I know your inner thoughts. Even the ones that you won't admit to yourself. You've spent over ten years holding a patronizing pity for all these creatures you encounter on cases, who did horrible things in the drive to reproduce. And in the end, you were just one more of them."

His father cracks another seed. "But if it makes you feel superior to say you were just trying to help a friend out, fine. 'Sure, Scully, I'll be your sperm donor'," he mocks his son with a droll tone.

Then he lifts his shoulders. "I gave it to you anyway."

"Gave it? You mean-" Mulder waves his hand.

Bill nods.

Mulder shakes his head as if to fling away this insanity. "First of all, that means I have to believe in God, then that you are with that god and have his ear."

Bill chuckles. "Believe what you want. William came to be, and neither you, nor your delightfully lovely little scientist, have an explanation."

Mulder just wants his father to go away. He strikes out. "My leading theory was that your friend, the smoking bastard, had done something. He was the source of Scully's cancer cure, and he had her before she became pregnant."

His small smile becoming a smirk, Bill says, "He thought he could. I got there first."

Mulder purses his mouth. "Doesn't matter," he said shortly. "William's gone."

The seeds are finished. Bill brushes the salt from his hands. He pins his son with his cool stare. "Are you going to blame Dana for that?"

Mulder only glares back, trying to close his thoughts against a spirit which he does not believe is real and feeling like a damn idiot in the process.

"Your mother hated me every day after Samantha was taken. Don't be like that too."

"It's not the same," Mulder says, the words catching in his raw throat.

"True. Dana Scully is stronger than I am. But you are your mother's son," Bill says, cursing Mulder as lightly as touching him with a raven's feather.

Mulder leans against the wall again, requiring its cold comfort. "You and Mom didn't survive. How will Scully and I make it?"

"Just take the damn donut, son," Bill urges him.

Sliding down to the floor again, Mulder shakes his head in protest. He is his father's son; he has lost the battle to stop the invasion, and in the process, allowed every immediate happiness to be lost as well. There are yet more sacrifices to be made. Only then does he realize that the cell is mercifully silent again. He is alone.

When the touch comes to his shoulder and he hears Scully's pained breathing, he assumes that it's another vision. Then she says, "Mulder's it's me."

It's always her. And he wakes to fight again.

~The End


End file.
